The word “cult” comes from the Latin cultus, which in late Latin means “worship”. The earlier meaning is “care”, and it is also where we get the words “culture” and “cultivation”.
Historically speaking, the word “cult” refers to a specific collection of rites or worship practices within a “religion”. Until recently, it has been a neutral word and can refer to almost any specific practices, such as the veneration of saints in Catholicism.
False Democracy Is The Cult That’s Out Of Order
Cults ask significantly huge time and money from their adherents, often asking for a person’s life savings to progress in the organization. They are usually totalitarian and demand that the individual give themselves up to the organization or theology.
CULT Vs RELIGION
1) CULT: Single, an unquestioned leader: who makes all the rules, with no accountability to peers, a presbytery, a chapter, or co-leaders.
RELIGION: Plurality and hierarchy of leadership, accountable to one another with a charter or church constitution including a mechanism in place to remove leaders who abuse their power.
2) CULT: Cohabitation: Members often live in a group or commune, often with the leader.
RELIGION: Members have their own lives and homes and come together to worship or socialize, then go back to family homes.
3) CULT: Isolation: Members are often not allowed to interact/socialize with outsiders, and frequently are required to separate from their friends and families.
RELIGION: Respect the friends and family of their adherents, almost always encouraging family relationships, even with family members not part of the religion.
4) CULT: Coercion: Coercive recruitment methods, often including sleep deprivation, withholding of food or bathroom breaks, locking the initiate in a room with a succession of people hammering in the group’s ideas. Essentially, these are classic brainwashing techniques.
RELIGION: Members, including new members, are free to come and go as they please.
5) CULT: Repetition: Members are told what to believe on a daily basis, with intense, though often subtle, indoctrination techniques used to hold members.
RELIGION: Teaching and study groups are mutually encouraged with all members free to contribute insights. A variety of subjects are discussed.
6) CULT: Exclusiveness: Initiates are often told that only “select” members of the cult will reach the ultimate goal. This is an incentive to stay and to be more dedicated to the cult.
RELIGION: All have the same requirements and opportunities for advancement, leadership positions, and participation.
7) CULT: Bread trails: The dogma is fed to the initiate in small pieces, and gaining more knowledge about the dogma requires a greater commitment to the organization.
RELIGION: Typically all beliefs are publicly available with no effort made to keep some beliefs secret.
8) CULT: Alienation: Adherents are encouraged or even bullied into thinking in terms of “us versus them” with total alienation from “them.”
RELIGION: Members are encouraged to quietly show themselves as exemplary among their peers in secular workplaces and in public.
9) CULT: Seclusion: Members are often not allowed to leave the cult or even the cult compound. Even temporary excursions among outsiders are done in pairs or in groups with a trusted member always present.
RELIGION: Gatherings are held at regular intervals with members free to come or skip as they please.
10) CULT: Totalitarian: Cults ask significantly more time and money from their adherents, often asking for a person’s life savings to progress in the organization. They are usually totalitarian and demand that the individual give themselves up to the organization or theology.
RELIGION: The tithe (10% of income) is a good example of what religion may ask of its adherents, and rarely will anyone check up on members to make sure they are doing this. In pretty much all churches, this is strictly voluntary.
Cults That Are Alive Today
Happy Science
Raëlism
The Brethren
Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints
Hikari No Wa
Twelve Tribes
Nuwaubian Nation
Congregation for the Light
Eckankar
Builders of the Adytum
Kashi Ashram
For more interesting blogs check out this page
Buy Designer T-Shirts At Shopping Monster
